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hogwartstoalexandria · 22 hours

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LISTEN

We've been rewatching The Walking Dead from the prison onward and have just made it past S7E01 and I am SO DEEP IN MY RICKYL FEELINGS this has not happened in so long but man. You just cannot watch this show without getting the vibes straight up in your face. I can't.

This is so nostalgic. @twdobsessive @marooncamaro @jeromesankaraao3 @1lostone @serenalunera

Yes, this is because of the spinoffs. We've finished the Maggie and Negan one and have been waiting for all the eps of The Ones Who Live to be released in France to binge. We've only watched the first ep of Daryl—it's hard for us Frenchies to handle so much Frenchness in our Walking Dead 😂.

BUT RICKYL MY GOD I HAVE MISSED YOU

#the walking dead #marie rambles #trip down memory lane #yes the “alexandria” part of my username is for TWD im not an egypt nerd altho that'd have been neat 😂#my god #rickyl #rick grimes × daryl dixon #my feelings are everywhere

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hogwartstoalexandria · 25 days

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This is a day of having feelings about Criminal Minds seasons 3-5.

#criminal minds

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hogwartstoalexandria · 30 days

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Bunch of Jims with their respective Spocks

#Spirk #Kirk/Spock #Star trek #star trek fanart #James T. Kirk #Spock #Jim Kirk #SNW #star trek tos #star trek aos

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hogwartstoalexandria · 30 days

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Captains' Gambit UEF Captain James Kirk and Captain Spock of the Sh'Rel have been working together for months to take down the Romulans. The culminating mission could mean incredible things for Vulcan-Human relations. My K/S Spring Fever 2024 entry! Originally posted to AO3, to the Spring Fever Collection. Don't forget to check out the amazing works produced this year!!!!

#😍😍😍#spock #Spirk #james t kirk #Star Trek Fanart #Star Trek #Star Trek Strange New Worlds #Star Trek SNW #Strange New Worlds

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hogwartstoalexandria · 1 month

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On Writing Combat and Sex Scenes

Today I want to talk about writing sex and combat (and no, I do not mean combative sex). This post is inspired by a few recent events:

Once, a long time ago, I read a blog post that said “if you can write a combat scene, you can write a sex scene” and that was mind-blowing for me because while I was well-versed in writing erotica, I couldn’t write combat to save my life.

More recently, at Boskone, I participated on a panel about writing combat, and the research involved there-in.

Even more recently, I had someone look at me say, “You’re not a gay guy. How do you write gay sex scenes?”

So. Let’s begin.

I get it—sex and combat aren’t interchangeable. But at their core, they have some strong similarities which can be leveraged while writing. Both are intense, high drama, and can involve a lot of anxiety and quick thought. Both tend to narrow focus down to the moment and the current feeling and action. Both are heightened emotion and physical reaction. Both can involve actions that lie outside the author’s personal experience.

I started writing erotica when I was a freshman in college. I posted it online (does anyone remember rec.arts.erotica?) and was surprised (and pleased) by the compliments I received. Turned out my readers were not expecting the idea of emotion being entangled in their erotica. They were invested emotionally in how the stories went, and how my characters felt. Since I was writing from the point of view that made sense to me at the time, they were het stories from a female perspective, and they were very focused on the emotional connections and how the physical events heightened those emotions.

Male readers were surprised by the intensity of the feelings that these stories gave them (as opposed to pure arousal). It got me thinking about how I wrote, and why I wrote, and I tried to talk about it some at the time. I was eighteen. I was still a new writer. The internet itself was new. I wasn’t entirely certain how to frame it, but I remember getting one comment where a guy was surprised at how struck he’d been by the moment in the scene where everything shuddered to a halt due to an event in the story that interrupted the action, and I replied that that was because I wasn’t writing about the sex. I was writing about the character’s reaction to the sex.

Which has always been how I write. At the time, that was my only tool: put myself in the character’s mind, and write what they feel. If that’s affection and attraction and physical reaction, write that. Tangle it up, and hope the reader feels that entanglement.

Now, fast forward several years, and take a little side trip onto a tangent wherein I learned something very important about writing craft.

I was reading Syne Mitchell’s End in Fire, I think it was, and I kept having panic attacks. Now, I did most of my reading late, often when I woke in the middle of the night due to stress, or just because my brain refused to rest. I was in a rough place in life in general, with a lot of external work stuff going on and very small children. I wasn’t sleeping well. And it took me some time to figure out why I was struggling to read a book which I actually loved (and when I read it later in life, I enjoyed it greatly).

It was the sentence structure.

In order to induce the emotion of the scene, the sentences were short. Sharp. Quick. There was no time for the reader to breathe, much like there was no time for the heroine to do anything but act. The reader was caught up in the rising tension, to the point where my anxious, sleep-deprived brain, caught a panic attack from it.

The technique was brilliant.

Now back to our original timeline, wherein I read a post about how if you can write combat, you can write sex scenes. This post assumed that more people felt comfortable writing violence than sex. I was the reverse. I’d been writing about sex for over a decade when I saw this post, and it made a light bulb go off in my brain.

If writing sex was like writing combat… was the reverse also true? Could I improve my skills at writing battles by analyzing what worked when I wrote erotica?

So I tried doing just that. Back then, I found combat overwhelming. There was so much going on, and I was trying so hard to write good description that I lost all of the intensity. I was focusing on everything that was going on at the same time.

Thinking about how sex scenes were all intense emotion and narrowed focus, I applied that to my combat scenes. I wrote only what the point of view character experienced, and tied everything to their actions and reactions. I thought about how they breathed, how they moved, how they thought. I used those short, sharp sentences as they processed the scene.

That doesn’t mean I forgot about everything else going on in the scene. That’s impossible. After all, in any story the things the character doesn’t pay attention to might be as important as the things they do focus on. Stuff still happens, and there is still fallout. I needed to know what else was happening so that if the character moved from one place to another, or did something that put them in the path of a different part of the action, I could have them start processing it.

But it also meant that on the page, out of sight was out of mind. Everything narrowed down to the now. The immediacy. Suddenly my combat scenes snapped into focus.

During the panel at Boskone, all of the panelists had experience with different fighting styles (fencing, street combat, and of course, me with taekwondo). I spoke about how for me, that narrow focus is very real when I spar. I know there are some people who naturally see a move or two ahead while fighting; I don’t. I am stuck in act and react mode. Can I kick them now? Can I attempt a head shot? Oh, no, circle back and away or they’re going to hit me… that’s how my brain works during a sparring match.

It’s not like a total blackout—there should be a vague awareness of things around the character. Sounds in particular, or sometimes flashes of movement. Something distracting can catch the attention of the fighter, but the personal fight will always pull the character back.

Combat feels easy when I’m writing like that.

Of course, there’s still the question of writing about something if I’ve never experienced it. As someone did point out to me: I am not a gay man, so how does that affect writing sex scenes? I’ve also never fought with a sword. Brawled. Fought from horseback. I have, however, held a blade, shot a gun, shot an arrow, rode a horse. I have a vague idea of how these things work, much like I have a working knowledge of sex in general.

So yes, research gets involved. Sometimes research is observational, sometimes it’s reading (there’s so much good stuff out there). I highly recommend video for combat scenes—find things that have the feel that you’re going for, then put yourself in the place of the character you want to write about. Practice. Work through the ideas of how things fit together, and what your character will (and will not!) know during the fight.

If you need to, stand up and block the scene by thinking about how you would experience it. What can you see, and what is out of sight? If someone is coming at you with a blade, what are your options? How do height differences affect you? Yes, I have asked friends and husband to help me block scenes.

“Stand right there and show me what it looks like if you punch me. Okay, so if I do this then…” Yeah. It’s a thing. But it works.

When doing your research, remember that movie fighting (and hell, movie sex scenes) isn’t realistic. It’s meant to look good. For combat, if you can find re-enactments, or sparring videos, I highly recommend taking a look at those.

Anyway, the point is: I don’t have to have shot someone, and I don’t have to have had gay sex in order to write about them. What I do need to know is how it feels emotionally to do those things, and I can extrapolate that from what I do know. I need to know enough about the details so I can get it right, and that’s where research will help me. Also, use language to create emotion. Because emotions are where we grab the reader, and how we pull them into the scene.

Combat and sex aren’t so different when it comes to writing, and the personal experience. Now, go forth and write!

#writing #writing resources #writing sex #writing combat #💙

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hogwartstoalexandria · 2 months

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they sit and judge people (everyone thinks they're weird)

#😍#severus snape #lily evans #snily

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hogwartstoalexandria · 2 months

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#💙💙💙💙#hp fanart #sirius black #severus snape #sirius black x severus snape #hp snack #snirius #starprince #blackprince #sirius x severus #marauders era

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hogwartstoalexandria · 3 months

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY @masterwords !!!

#fantastic piece #they look so happy #what a good gift for our Hotchgan queen <33333 #hotchgan #criminal minds

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hogwartstoalexandria · 4 months

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Not So Big

For @hogwartstoalexandria, my darling. A very quick little story involving Hotch, Morgan, a scraped knee and some superhero band-aids. (No warnings, all cute.) ~1k words.

**

It was a rare morning treat anymore, getting to meet up at the park for a run. Hotch had been cleared to exercise again for a couple of weeks, but he was taking it slow as a promise to the team for collapsing in front of them. Guilt could be a powerful motivator.

“You ready for this, old man?”

Hotch's eyes narrowed, but he couldn't hide the smile. Yes, he was more than ready for this...getting back into this routine felt like coming home. A mile in he'd be bitching about a stitch in his side, two miles and his feet would hurt because his new shoes weren't completely broken in yet, but at three miles he'd hit his stride and everything around him would melt away except the thumping of his heart and the sound of his own breath. Every so often he'd turn to the side, note that Derek was still there running beside him, going much slower than he was capable of for Hotch's sake, and a feeling of complete contentedness would wash over him.

“You doin' okay?” Derek called, and Hotch nodded.

“Great,” he replied. And it was true. The sky above was mottled blue and white, a wash of gray on the horizon warning of inclement weather later. There was frost still kissing the last of the leaves, it would melt away by the time they finished. An eerie quiet settled in the park, the sound of icy gravel crunching beneath their feet.

At four miles they made a turn and looped back, talking now about nothing in particular. Filling the icy air with words that crystallized before them, blew away like smoke on the wind. It was nearing winter, the trees and the grass were doing their best to hang on but things were going bare. There was snow in the forecast; they knew if they ran this route again tomorrow, all of these leaves would be on the ground. Hotch lost himself in the tangled thoughts of winter and death, spring and birth, it never ceased to amaze him that the Earth knew what to do and when.

“On the left!” came a shout from behind them and they both jumped to the side, letting a group of cyclists roll by. Hotch pumped his hands a few times to regain feeling in his fingers and let Derek slip up ahead of him as they approached the hill. He was capable of more right now and Hotch would eventually catch up, or so he told himself. Even if not, he was enjoying the slow thud of his feet on the ground.

“Go ahead!” he shouted when Derek craned his neck to see Hotch still plugging along behind him. “I'll meet you at the car!”

He slowed his pace, an ache in his belly deepening behind the new scar. Sometimes he thought he was imagining it, a memory of pain more than anything real, just a phantom but Jessica insisted he listen to it and pay attention. There was no reason to push it now that Derek had gone ahead, so he drew back until he was comfortable again and ascended the hill that would pop him out on the final stretch to the car.

Up ahead, he caught sight of Derek sitting on the curb next to the car with his pant leg rolled up and he thought for a moment how very like Jack it was. This was a sight he was familiar with.

“What happened?”

“Kids,” Derek muttered, shaking his head. “Lost their soccer ball, didn't see it in time.” Derek told him about how embarrassing it was, the way he sprawled out like a flying squirrel as his feet went out from under him, about how the kids looked terrified at first and then like they were going to burst from holding in laughter once he managed to get back up. "You would have laughed."

"I'm sure," Hotch said as he crouched and checked out the gash on his knee, bloody but not terrible. Jack had come away far worse from an accident on the swings just the week before...this was nothing. The scrapes on his palms were light, indents from gravel since picked out leaving only soft green grass stains in their wake.

“Come here,” Hotch said, holding his hands out to pull Derek to his feet. He watched Derek walk, eyeing him for further injury, and came away satisfied that this would be a quick fix. At least the external injuries would be...his wounded pride might take a little longer, and probably some coaxing by way of a decadent slice of peach pie at his favorite diner. Popping the gate of his SUV, he told Derek to sit in the back and crawled in far enough to grab a large black crate from behind the seats.

“What's that?”

With a determined hum, Hotch ignored the question and popped open the top. The inside was neatly packed, everything in separate baggies clearly labeled and sorted by injury type. Taped to the lid was an inventory sheet, laminated and ready to be marked with supplies he'd used. "You gonna bill me for this, doc?" Derek asked with a smirk and Hotch chuckled at that, shook his head. He knew how it looked...he also knew it was absolutely necessary.

"If I don't replace items right away, this thing gets depleted too fast. Kids." With steady hands, Hotch wiped at Derek's knee, carefully nudging and picking bits of debris from where they'd lodged themselves, until it was all cleaned up and he could inspect it. It stung and he hissed, watching a family pull their infant from a car seat across the parking lot to distract himself. He could handle a gunshot like a pro, but a little scrape was making him feel lightheaded.

“It's not bad,” Hotch muttered, his lips barely moving. Derek hazarded a glance down at where Hotch had fixed him up, it looked a lot less menacing now without the blood and the muddy gravel. With one large swipe, Hotch smudged the antibiotic ointment over the wound and pressed a series of Iron Man and Batman band-aids over the entire thing.

“I think my first aid kit is all band-aid wrappers at this point...and the tube of neosporin is definitely expired.”

Hotch eyed him suspiciously and shook his head. “What if...” he started, and Derek laughed, interrupting him.

“I'll just use yours. Do I get a lollipop now?”

"How about breakfast instead?"

#reread this because <3 #hotchgan #mortch #aaron hotchner #derek morgan #angela doing the goddess work

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hogwartstoalexandria · 4 months

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One word. Hotchgan.